4th Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska, Candace Waugaman Copy Photograph Collection; Anchorage Museum; B1994.026.47
Join us online for a virtual Cook Inlet Historical Society lecture.
Free.
Advance registration is required to receive the link. Please register directly on the Anchorage Museum website by following this link: Register Here
Speakers: Laura Koenig & Rick Goodfellow
After less than eight weeks on the job, Anchorage's first police chief died from a “gunshot wound by person unknown." Histories of the city typically ascribe his death to frontier lawlessness, illegal liquor, or gambling dens of inequity. Who killed police chief J. J. "Jack" Sturgus? Nearly one hundred years later, Laura Koenig and Rick Goodfellow claim they have solved Anchorage's first cold case. Their presentation will reveal new evidence and recently uncovered details about early Anchorage and the life and times of John Johnson Sturgus.
Musician and historian Laura Koenig received her Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa as the first performer awarded the prestigious Iowa Fellowship. Her dissertation on experimental music in eighteenth-century France received the Stanley Fellowship for International Research and the Indiana University Press Award. Dr. Koenig holds additional degrees from UCLA (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and UC San Diego. She was also a McCormick Fellow at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.
As Artistic Director for the Anchorage Festival of Music, Dr. Koenig specializes in melding archival research with the performing arts. Recent productions include the highly regarded An Irving Berlin Alaskan Revue, George Washington Heard This!, and Campaign Classics. For fifteen years, she taught all upper division music history at UAA. Dr. Koenig serves as principal flute with Anchorage Opera and section flute with Anchorage Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Koenig also directs Fair Weather Flutes (flute choir), coaches for Alaska Youth Orchestras, and teaches flute at UAA and her private studio.
Rick Goodfellow used to think he knew a lot about Anchorage history, having personally experienced more than two thirds of it. In 1956, his father accepted a promotion which required the family to move to Anchorage. Even as a kid, Rick showed an interest in history and found it puzzling that so few people in Anchorage knew or cared much about the town's past. He took his bachelor's degree at Lewis and Clark College with a triple major in journalism, theatre, and political science. He viewed these as an approximation of the history degree he really wanted, but the school required a second language for that and Rick couldn't hack it. Upon returning to Alaska, he worked as arts administrator for a decade and a half before founding Anchorage's classical music radio station, KLEF 98.1 FM, which he continues to operate thanks to the forbearance of his wife, Jan Ingram.
Twelve years ago, Rick started the Ghost Tours of Anchorage as a way to promote Anchorage history. Jack Sturgus quickly emerged as his favorite ghost story. Then, one evening two years ago, Laura Koenig took the Ghost Tour, and a cold case partnership was born.
This is the fourth talk in the Cook Inlet Historical Society’s 2020-2021 Lecture Series, “Disasters.” These presentations are virtual, free and open to the public via the Cloudcast link; the same link can be used to review the recorded event after the program conclusion.